Much Ado About Apples
by daringu
Summary: Mustang and Hughes, Mustang and Hawkeye, and apples. Spoilers for the anime ending, and apples.


**Title**: Much Ado About Apples   
**Author**: Manda   
**Spoilers**: Up to the end of the anime (ep 51) with emphasis on events in 25 & 51   
**Notes**: Would honestly require too many to put here. Suffice to say, the anime staff has quite the love affair with apples.

_One_

The apple vendor pauses, shoves the apple in Brigadier General Roy Mustang's face and the sunlight gleams off it, making it seem as if it has a little white patch. In paintings they always portray the fruits as having little white patches on the right where the light bounces on them; his parents had taken him to the museum once when he was little and one of his favorite pictures was a still life of a candle with a pointed flame, an apple, and some cheese. The beauty and harshness and weird of the pictures with only splashes of color on them stuck in his mind, but so did the white spot on the apple in a painting by a man with a famous name that he does not recall.

"Only 30 cenz, great Colonel!" the vendor says and he pulls his hand out of his pocket (it's always there when he walks and he doesn't remember when the habit came about) to flip the coin into the air and into the willing hands of the vendor, who nods his head, tosses him the apple and attacks the next person walking behind him. Good thing Hawkeye's not here, he thinks, she'd shoot at the poor vendor to stop him from molesting her and he, great peacemaker that he is, would have to step in and say Now my dear, won't you leave the poor man alone?

He bites it while striding along to work on such a beautiful summer day and the apple's rather good in that way that can only be explained as "good", juicy and sweet probably because it's not autumn yet and still the apples fall ripe from the trees. Apples always have a intriguing crispness about them that other fruits lack. The alchemical mythology surrounding them is equally intriguing: a serpent is frequently mentioned, and he has traitorous thoughts that it hearkens back to some long-dead religion. Ridiculous, considering that the rules of alchemy are the rules of science, and science and religion do not get along. To this alchemist, anyway, he thinks and takes another bite.

It was apple, wasn't it? he remembers and pushes himself in a mood of calm, strangling and silencing the voices and throwing them back where they come from - it was an apple pie he brought me that one day. Gracia-made apple pie.

"Eat," Maes had said. Roy glared back, fanatically stubborn in his worship of the Great God Alchemy. Who needs to eat when one's sustained by blasphemous and illegal thoughts? When he wasn't insanely depressed, he was downright giddy with the foreign and great and terrible plans, the fuck-you-authority aspect of it, far from the maddening crowd, as if he had returned to his country roots and was plowing the earth again for food with his parents. Bending alchemy to his will in a way to force things back to the way they damn well should be. Half of the circle was outlined on the floor in setting-sun-orange until Maes had pulled the chalk out of his hand, because Roy had been stupid enough to try and continue drawing the circle while the other man was there and Maes had seen his scribbled research. The last bit of the circle had become a series of intermittent strokes where Maes had dragged his hand away. And had sat him down, had forced an apple pie in his hand in one of those wobbly non-solid grey pans that shifted as he held it. The pan's wobble factor caused the pie to crack along the middle and a spot of apple goo to shoot out of the pie and land on his cheek. Yes, he thought as he wiped the apple bit off his cheek and onto his finger, this is rather gooey and gross, but decided to taste it anyway. It had the texture of mucus but was rather sugary, and at that precise moment he recalled he hadn't eaten in nearly a day and was quite hungry.

When he remembered enough biochemistry to recall the equation of blood sugar he had eaten half the pie like a child, with his fingers, and they were covered in light brown sugary-syrup goo and brown solid flecks of pie crust. He was also shaking. Maes looked at him expectantly.

"I feel like I'm going to throw up."

"Good! That's better than before," he nodded, and gestured at the pie. "Isn't my Gracia the best at pie-making in the world?"

Roy recalled that at some point, some group of alchemists thought one could make a gleaming, true Philosopher's Stone with an apple and a lot of human blood, weren't those alchemists crazy back then. They tried to make people out of carbon and sulfur and some other elements too, didn't they-oops.

"Can I trust you here alone tonight?"

"Why wouldn't you be able to?" He interrupted my work, a small but very heavy voice said at the back of his mind. Sheesh. Can't one be allowed to do blasphemous things around here for five minutes? Somewhere he wanted to feel that circle charge into life, do that forbidden tango (ridiculous image he had in his mind of himself dancing the tango and all) in a circle to fix all the stupid things he did. What was this, he thought to himself, weird metaphor day? But tango seemed to be an accurate description.

"Maybe I can't."

"If I eat more of the pie will you go?"

Maes smiled and didn't respond. Roy glared still and, not taking his eyes off the other man, raised one more handful of apple pie in his sticky hands to his mouth. Maes didn't say anything.

"You drive a hard bargain, but I'm not eating anymore." Perhaps if you go away I can finish this, he thought with renewed vigor and stamina and the energy of the sugar-high. He was even like a mad scientist, shaking from the cold outside and the cold inside and the abundance of those carbohydrate molecules.

"All right, now you're going to bed."

Dread hit him. No-can't-must finish. Must atone or just see the damn thing through to the end. Can't go back to a life of dignified smiles and dancing and paperwork and pretending to be okay and pretending to like the Fuhrer and ordering men to do things he didn't want to do and faking everything.

Maes' smile was inviting, almost too inviting, and Roy walked away from it, into the kitchen and fumbled around, looking for a napkin to wipe the sticky film left in the pie's wake on his hands. Can't activate a transmutation circle with sticky fingers, right. Right, he thought back to himself, and felt Maes' hands on his shoulders. He felt breath that might have been a product of words at the back of his neck as he scrubbed his hands furiously under the water streaming from the faucet. There were no napkins left.

"I think I'm going crazy," he said, finally.

* * *

_Two_

Too stiff and unworn is his new military uniform and he's like an imprisoned marionette in physical terms even if not in mental. He walks past the markets of Central, past the dark alleyways that have too much blood splattered on them, too many secrets. Through a park. Past a telephone booth. Past some swans, who raised their beady eyes at him and then, sensing he was not a threat, laid back down.

Since the Colonel (as everyone still calls him though the paperwork says Brigadier General) is late, the people in headquarters are sure to be rushing around, making frantic phone calls to a certain Lieutenant who is inevitably awake by now. Liza Hawkeye will tell them in her stern voice that yes, he's a little late this morning, the smile on her face betraying only to Black Hayate that she is not as her tone implies quite annoyed at him.

It is the first day he has left the cane unattended and lonely under his-or her, he supposes, he's not too good at this- bed. He hopes it is covered with dust soon enough, or that she pulls it out and uses it as a toy for Black Hayate.

He tosses the apple core underhand into the trash and whistles one of the tunes the buglemen used to tap out in Ishvar days. Much ado about apples, really.

She had stuffed one into his mouth yesterday, face screwed up in a combination of concentration and fear and something that was as foreign to him as the Xing beads they sell in the marketplace. What, he had wanted to say, I was just spouting some philosophical nonsense, usually you counter me right then and there with some intelligent dismissive remark, not with a gesture telling me to shut up.

But his mouth was stuffed with apple, so he just bit off the juicy bit in his mouth and let the rest fall into his hands. Really, now really, he meant to say to the Lieut-bah, Liza, he wasn't any good at this-why are you so nervous?

What came out was "Where'd you get these? These apples are pretty good," inbetween bites and the look he didn't recognize disappeared. That regular stern look reappeared again. He was used to that.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you to not speak with your mouth full?"

"No," he lied, still chewing. She knew he was lying, of course.

"I know you're lying."

"Does it matter?"

Does it matter, he thought, and didn't say it out loud for fear that she might take it as things too philosophical for this moment and shove another apple in his general direction. He had lied many times in his lifetime, lies large and small, to the Elric brothers and his commanding officers and to his mother when he ate all the cookies in the jar at age eight. It probably doesn't matter, though he had thoughts on occasion that words were in fact another and very binding form of alchemy.

"It matters right now as much as the traditional alchemic meaning of apples."

"It matters just as much as this up here," he knew upon the instant what she planned to do and moved his head, caught her searching right hand in his left.

"Now you're getting into nonsensical arguments as an excuse to touch things you can't. What justice is it when I can spout philosophical babble and get an apple in the mouth, but you make nonsensical connections and get to fiddle with this thing?"

He then readjusted with what he termed "the thing" so he didn't have to think about it too much. The doctors said: no hope for sight ever again. He had thought: equivalent trade, and wondered if he'd have strange homunculus powers out of the whole deal. The doctors said: you will walk without a cane again, we don't know if with a limp or not. He had thought: damn. He had been bed-ridden and listless, unable to walk at all at first. The lieuten-no, Liza!-started to win arguments about alchemical theories and equivalent trade with him as she sat by his side at the hospital. It seemed as if she belonged nowhere else, and he didn't think about how she had any money to feed herself at all. On one of Armstrong's hurried visits when he sparkle-scared her out of the room he informed Roy tacitly that "the former Mustang subordinates" collected donations to feed her and the new government paid for her apartment, partially out of guilt, the sparkle-man suspected.

Roy stumbled over the words "former" and "subordinate", and after the meeting told Hawkeye to go to work. It might have been yelling. In either case she spoke back with conviction, with words he didn't really listen to, looking him straight in the eye. He figured out while she spoke that what that had been bugging him about her was that he hadn't seen her hair up since that night.

"Whatever you say," he had finally acquiesed. Not much mattered. He had won The Battle, and it still felt like the world had ended. Over the days, through the therapy and repeated explanations of how Bradley had purposefully chose the points to stab the sword in that would cause him the most pain and cripple him if he lived (which he did, unfortunately), he read alchemic theory and tried not to think or speak.

A nurse, flustered and blushing as they always were around him (even with one eye missing!), stumbled through a doctor's report saying he could go home - if he had someone to take care of him. Liza was there, smiling, and informed the nurse that Mr. Mustang had already accepted her offer of hospitality. He didn't feel like contradicting her and making a scene in front of the nurse. There would be rumors, rumors, rumors that would fly back to Central Headquarters with alarming speed.

So he he let himself be herded into a black military car, bitter. "The man who killed the most powerful man in Amestris now has no power at all and is ordered about by his former subordinate and friend."

She turned to him, hair bound in a multiple of small silver clips but still down, and handed him an apple.

"Eat. I know you didn't eat breakfast."

He ate though that was just what he had complained over and felt slightly better, so didn't complain anymore.

The group still at headquarters bought him a plain brown polished cane that he wanted to break and throw in the trash but he knew that would cause trouble so he didn't. The cab pulled up at Liza's apartment complex and he allowed himself to be pulled out. He rambled up the stairs in his now stumbling gait, using the bannister as support and refused an offer of Liza's hand for help.

"You all act like you think I'm going to break."

"You almost did," she said so softly he almost didn't hear, and he managed to not stop while he remembered a memory that thus far had been locked up or repressed, he didn't know which, such trickeries of the mind: the moonlight glinting off Archer's metal limbs, a running and stumbling form that had to be the Lieutenant, the sound of several shots, and his eye that wasn't bleeding profusely having a nice view of the Fuhrer's concrete porch floor.

The last thing he had heard was her crying, begging him to stay, and despite that, he had wanted everything to fade out. There was no fear.

"I didn't want to deal with this," he said once they were in her room, and flopped down on the couch in his new careful manner in order to not damage himself further. "And everything for you is now gone."

"It's not," she said, and he didn't believe her.

More days passed with repeated trips to the hospital for therapy. Walks in the park. She taught him Xing meditation. In midst of attempting to find the calm he never could one day he realized that his days were passing much too quickly to be real. She bought him fruit, and he always loved the apples. She peeled them with knives expertly, without cutting herself ever, and he wondered how much time she had spent around Maes. He told her not to peel the apples, that he was not a five-year old and that was wasting the peel. She continued anyway, and he thought it might have even just been to annoy him. Was that uncharacteristic of her? He was unsure, as with most things those days.

One day they told him that the therapy was over, and he realized that he had lost his limp, and the sun shone as he lounged in what had inevitably become his bed because he could. She refused to let him sleep on the couch "in his condition", and he wouldn't have fought her about it then.

The Lieutenant was in a continued bad mood; she slammed and dropped things all morning (a sign he had picked up over the years as meaning she was in a bad mood), and confessed that she felt "it" was all her fault, despite the day's good news.

Hmm, he thought, somewhat silly from sugar and alcohol after already drinking some hard cider in celebration, and slid his hand in her hair just to see what she'd do, as a scientific inquiry. And bullshitted some philosophy that for some reason he actually meant, so - it wasn't bullshitting after all. She shoved a piece of apple in his mouth. The apples are in season, he thought, chewing the piece and almost laughing at the one seed he swallowed. She wasn't always perfect at cutting seeds out of the fleshy insides at the apple. There were stories of his childhood that said if one swallowed a seed, one would soon have an interesting present growing in one's stomach.

They played with words and she tried to take off that eyepatch that did not yield anything near as interesting as the Ultimate Eye.

"You know," he said as he still held her wrist, "I'm afraid of my life's greatest irony. That stupid eyepatch."

"It's a sign of your triumph," she said, and yanked her wrist away to pick up the fork and stab another piece of apple on it. "And you're still here. That's what's most important."

He refused the apple. "No more. Can't I go take a walk?"

"An apple is not enough for lunch, this is a snack. In an hour I will make you lunch, and then you may take a walk."

"I don't need to be told what to do anymore," he said, picking up the last slice of the apple out of the bowl and shoving it his mouth, crossing his arms. "I think I finally get it now. But-" he said, words intermittent with chewing because Liza always told him to not do that and he thought of all the thank-yous he could say, for care and loss of money and roundabout talks and philosophical babble and loyalty and sharp words, and decided none of it would work.

There was a blank moment. It worked out with minimum damage to his ego, because she hugged him first, hard, with an uncharacteristic disregard for stitches where a sword had been dragged inside his skin.

"I don't think I should steal your bed anymore," he mumbled into her hair.

And here he is, this morning, late for his first day back at work and with no Liza Hawkeye to yell at him because he's late; she isn't returning for several more days because she said the two of them had seen enough of each other lately. He doubts that, and thinks that she just is lazy when no one else is around. She made him late anyway, in another burst of uncharacteristic spark that makes him wonder about her and whether that isn't just some homunculus with blonde hair that lies in his-her (his/her their?) bed. Of course not, no real homunculus would have that much patience with him, but it's fun to speculate. He wonders if Maes would laugh at them.

Headquarters is the same under the new democratic cabinet as it was under Bradley. The military pageboys and girls scurry around with their messages, the telephone crews are as grumpy as ever, and still there are groups of black-coated new recruits giggling in corners. Some recognize him and salute nervously; whispers follow him in a wave that he ignores. Upstairs, it is as if he has never left: there is a pile of paperwork on his desk, and the others are playing cards that they shove in their desks as soon as he walks in.

He picks through the mail while giving inane orders to the others to keep them busy. An envelope with a return address from Rizenpul catches his eye, and he is not surprised to see that it is from Alphonse Elric and asking for help. It's the perfect time; he's ready for it now.


End file.
